Language barrier

“Ang hindi magmahal sa sariling wika, daig pa ang hayop at malansang isda.” – Jose P. Rizal
PURSUANT to Presidential Decree No. 1041(s. 1997), August has been declared as Buwan ng Wika (National Language Month) in the Philippines.
The theme for this year is Wika Natin ang Daang Matuwid, with the Department of Education and Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF) spearheading the celebration.
In his message to the country for Buwan ng Wika, President Benigno S. Aquino III emphasized on the importance of “having a common language to the country’s progress.”
“Nagkakaisa ang sambayanang Pilipino upang ipagdiwang ang Buwan ng Wika sa Agosto, sa pangunguna ng Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino.
Nakapaloob ang pagkakakilanlan ng isang lahi sa kanilang wika, at nabubuhay at nagbabago ito ayon sa pangangailangan ng panahong ating ginagalawan. Sa pamamagitan ng tinig na sumasalamin sa kolektibong karanasan at kasaysayan ng ating bansa, higit pa nating napalalalim ang pagkakaisa at diwa ng bayanihan, sa sarili man nating lupain, o saan man makakatagpo ng kapwa nating Pilipino. Nawa’y maging lunsaran ang pagdiriwang na ito ng malawakang tagumpay ng ating lipunan, habang sama-sama nating tinatalunton ang tuwid na landas,” Pres. Aquino said in his message.
In Conrado de Quiros’ Philippine Daily Inquirer column, “There’s the Rub,” he introspects on the relation of the country’s language to the quality of education.
A few months ago, Quacquarelli Symonds (a British organization specializing in education) “released its finding that Philippine universities had fallen way down in Asian rankings.”
De Quiros elaborated on how some people pointed the blame to schools’ (like the University of the Philippines) adoption of a bilingual policy and how they surmised that the country is better off using English as the medium of instruction for teaching.
De Quiros rationalizes: “The judgment about the decline of Philippine schools owing not to our stars but to our language, or the substitution of Filipino for English in various subjects, is of course specious. It overlooks the fact that UP, the most resolute in the enforcement of the bilingual policy, remained the only Philippine school in the top 100 in Asia, improving marginally from 68th to 67th this year. More to the point, it overlooks the fact that the other Asian countries that are doing far better than us do not have an English-only academic policy. It’s not just that some of them have a bilingual policy as well, it’s that most of them teach in their own languages.”
“It’s not just common sense, it’s scientific sense. The students who do best in math and the science are those who learned them in their languages. The lessons are immediately understandable, they are immediately learnable. By contrast, Filipino students who are taught math and science in English have to work literally doubly hard to learn them.”
“Beyond this, the role of English as the language of governance and communication apart from education, takes its toll in literacy. I won’t go into the part about governance except to say again what a grand thing it is that PNoy delivers his State of the Nation Address in Filipino. There is no overstating its impact, conveying as it does the true meaning of governance, a dialogue between governor and governed.”
However, de Quiros goes on to say that the language problem is more complicated than it seems: “Having said this, I must also say that the problem is damnably complicated and doesn’t lend itself to simple solutions. Though I myself would argue for using Filipino as the language of governance.”
“The situation is simply that, by dint of an accident of history, we are thoroughly schizophrenic linguistically. It’s not merely that we are divided by a host of dialects and subdialects, though that is a thorny problem enough in itself. Unfortunately, we did not become a colony like the Latin American ones, which became Spanish-speaking. Nor did we become like the other Asian countries whose languages survived colonial rule fairly intact. We are mestizos in more ways than one.”
“The schizophrenic part has to do with the fact that while most of us can understand and speak Filipino, or Tagalog, most of us can neither read nor write in it. Most of us being the so-called ‘intelligentsia.’”
In conclusion, De Quiros opines: “English can’t be this country’s national language. Trying to make it so is wagging the dog with its tail. But neither does Filipino supplant English as the primary written language — though I am perfectly open to challenge on this. Who knows? Maybe it can be done.”
He ends his essay with questions, more than answers: “How to forge a truly national language? How to use it to improve literacy? How to unite this country with one language? Frankly, I don’t know. Though framing the question in this way, or adding these observations to it, might help supply answers to it.”
Here in the United States, this chicken-and-egg problem poses even more complications for Filipino-Americans, especially for those who were born and raised here and who have English as their first (and perhaps, only) language.
Instead of being faced with the dilemma of choosing between English and their mother tongue, Filipino-Americans actually have to go the extra mile to learn the Filipino language, which as de Quiros earlier elaborated, is a “thorny problem,” having “a host of dialects and sub-dialects.”
Most US born-Filipinos would probably see it as similar to learning other foreign languages: Japanese, French, German, etc. However, learning one’s mother tongue is not just about understanding the language per se.
The big difference (and the most important thing) is that it is part of our identity and our heritage, as Filipinos.
And that difference makes all the effort worthwhile.
(AJPress)